Child of Destiny

Saturday, 25 March 2017

The Trials and Tribulations of Being A Freelance Writer

So in February, I went two weeks with no work to do. It was a stressful time for me because I don't do well with idleness, however exhausted I was from working back to back jobs. It's one thing to decide to take a break, it's another to be forced to do it because you can't find work.
Am I right?

I tried to use my time positively, caught up on some writing. Made some progress with Cinderella by Any Other Name and my other, as yet really named gay African post-apocalyptic romance. I even wrote a bit of Child of Destiny: Marcus Devereux. It was fun, I enjoyed it. At the same time, I was experiencing terrible anxiety about not having paid work.

So I tweak my profile on my freelancing site, realize I'd set my availability to less than 30 hours a week so I immediately change that to 'looking for new work' and voila. My inbox gets full again. Which was a relief because I was beginning to think nobody liked me. Or that my work was bad which is a really unfortunate thing for a writer to think.
If you're not confident in the quality of your work, you can't sell yourself to potential clients/readers. You literally cannot function without belief in your work.So it was all internal lectures and 'You can do it girl' and trying to believe that that's true.

The opposite thing to wondering if no one likes you though, is not being able to say no to anyone who shows the slightest interest in you. It's like, "Oh thank God, you want me? Yay. Okay."
Even though you might be taking on too much or the work is not really something you want to do; or you just know this client is going to be a pain in the ass but money...or the deadline is ridiculous and nobody in their right mind... I might be doing that right now.
I vowed during my forced holiday that I would find a better work/leisure balance. But I can already see myself falling into the work 24/7 mode.

My friend just had a baby.
I'm so excited for her and want to go see her; but I found myself thinking, "Maybe I can push that to some time in the middle of April after I've finished this batch of work."
The gag is, there's always a new batch of work and you really can't take the time and...
So no. I'm gonna pick a day THIS WEEK, put the work down and go see my friend.
I'm also taking time daily to update my "What if" fanfic if you're reading that. I find it helps to pass the time until Shadowhunters season 2b starts in June.
And I'm giving my books some attention, trying to bring something new in front of potential readers daily. A tumblr or instagram post, an excerpt, something.
Would you like an excerpt?
Here's one;